Jill Jackson - 04 - Watch the World Burn (12 page)

To give him credit, the counsellor did keep up for the first lap, and she figured that was a good three kilometres. When they got to the gatehouse he gave her a hopeful look –
Is that it?
Jill grinned and put on an extra burst. Sam Barnard dropped to the grass and gave her a salute. When she looped the gatehouse the third time, he was gone.

Now, her face angled into the shower spray, Jill wondered how she was going to get through a week here. She was furious with Gabriel. He’d called today, as promised. She was stunned when a nurse had told her he was on the line and had transferred it through. She hadn’t been expecting the call until tonight. But he was maddeningly scant on details of the case. He promised her he would tell her more as soon as he knew, but she didn’t feel she could trust him to do that. She knew that he believed that she’d be better off concentrating on grieving and recovery. She should never have agreed to come here. Still, Gabriel had promised he’d know more tomorrow. She told him he’d better, or she’d come back and find it out for herself.

Towelling her hair, Jill wondered whether she should contact Scotty’s mum and sister. She couldn’t imagine how hard it would be to make that call, but seeing them for the first time at the funeral would be even worse. It was scheduled for the day she was supposed to be back in Sydney. How am I going to get through that? Whether she lasted here or bailed early, she had a week to figure that one out.

Jill was grateful that the ward had been deserted when she’d come back from her run. One-to-one sessions took precedence over groups, so she’d also missed the afternoon session. She pulled on a pair of yoga kick pants and a long-sleeved tee and left the bedroom. She stopped at the communal ward kitchen, a small but well-equipped coffee-making hub, and made herself a green tea. She took it out to the balcony.

She selected a chair she’d seen vacant earlier. That’d reduce the chances of being caught up in some chair turf war when the others got back. She figured she couldn’t avoid them the whole week if she was going to stay. She sighed. It had been easier to speak to people over the past year than any time since she was a child. Working with Gabriel and the taskforce to catch Cutter and Co., going undercover and surviving by making social connections, interacting with other cops at the college – it had all helped with the dreaded communication thing. But with Scotty, Jill had really begun to thaw, to trust, to be able to say things that she didn’t even know she was feeling. He’d been like a bridge for her – a bridge from a frozen wasteland towards a warm, sunny world.

And now the bridge was gone. It felt like she’d come too far across to get back again, but Jill had no idea how she was going to move any further forward. She pulled her legs up onto the chair and rested her chin on her knees.

A brilliant red-feathered bird cracked seeds on the balcony railing, watching her, spitting his seed casings over the edge. She could see she was the entertainment while he ate his snack.

Voices, footsteps and laughter signalled their approach. Jill stood. Sat down again. Leaned back in the chair. Perched on the edge. The bird watched her, head askance, spat seeds.

The first to arrive was a surprise. A barrel-bellied golden Labrador ambled across the floorboards straight to her feet. She plonked her broad backside by Jill’s chair and stuck her blonde muzzle into Jill’s waiting hand. The dog smiled, her pink tongue lolling.

‘Yuck, dog germs,’ Jill told her.

The dog yawned cavernously, then stretched her paws forward and dropped her chest, deadweight, onto Jill’s feet. She patted her back.

‘I see you’ve met Fatso.’ A grey-bearded man took the seat next to Jill. He reached out a sandshoe and scratched at a spot near the dog’s tail.

‘Good name for her,’ said Jill. ‘I could use her back as a coffee table.’

Jill recognised Layla’s laugh behind her. ‘A coffee table! You could seat a family of four down to dinner around that body, baby.’

Jill smiled tightly. Seven other people dropped into chairs around the veranda.

‘All right, who reckons they can get everyone’s name right first go?’ asked Layla. ‘We gotta introduce everyone to Jill, here. I’d give it a go but I’ll fuck it up. I’ve only been over here a couple of days. Lollies for the person who can name everyone.’

‘I’ll give it a go,’ said a skinny blond-haired man with a goatee and a baseball cap. Jill guessed him for around twenty-five.

‘Seems to me you’ve always got plenty of your own lollies, Justin,’ said Layla. ‘Or someone’s lollies, anyway.’

The guy grinned. ‘That’s Kaitlin, Camilla, Brian, Doug, Lynne, and, um, June, isn’t it? And you’re Jill?’ asked Justin.

Jill nodded.

‘And I’m Justin, and that there’s the lovely Layla.’

‘You forgot the dog,’ said Layla, sullen.

‘She’s met the dog,’ said Justin, grinning. He held out a hand. ‘Got any jelly babies?’

‘Don’t worry about those two, Jill,’ said the bearded man next to her, Doug. ‘They’re always fighting. We all think they love each other.’

‘Fat chance!’ said Layla.

‘Speaking of fat, I have to get this dog off my feet,’ said Jill. ‘She weighs a tonne.’

‘She’s so spoiled,’ said Camilla, who looked to be a well-preserved forty-five, or a downhill-fast thirty-five.

‘We’re not supposed to feed her,’ said Lynne. She’s gotta be fifty, thought Jill. Ouch, those fingernails have to hurt. What was left of Lynne’s nails was surrounded by chewed, shredded skin. A couple of fingers looked to have nothing left but bloodied cavities. Jill looked away.

‘That dog is not supposed to be on the unit, you know,’ said June, the woman with the bomber jacket and sunglasses from group this morning; the outfit was still intact.

‘She used to belong to Billy Broken Back on Platypus,’ said Layla.

‘Don’t call him that,’ said June.

‘He was in a wheelchair,’ explained Camilla.

‘Poor Billy spent more time in this hospital than out of it,’ said Doug. ‘They couldn’t get his meds right. He was always talking to himself.’

‘He talked to others too, if you ever listened,’ said June.

‘And he loved Fatso,’ said Layla. ‘Everyone got to know her over the years on account of Billy Bro– on account of him getting worse if they didn’t let her come and stay with him when he was admitted.’

‘And then when he went over the Rainbow–’ began Camilla.

‘That means when he died,’ said Layla. ‘The hospital just kept Fatso. Billy didn’t have anyone else out there.’

‘Except she’s not supposed to be on the wards,’ said June.

Fatso yawned again and rolled onto her back.

When they pulled up in front of David Caine’s home, Emma Gibson reached under the seat for her handbag.

‘What do you need that for?’ said Eddie Calabrese, cracking his door. ‘I’ve got the recording equipment. You only need your notepad.’

‘Ah, thank you, Elvis,’ she said, unclipping the bag. ‘I can figure out what I need to bring. Can you just give me a sec?’ She rummaged through the bag until she found the flat package she was looking for – paracetamol. She’d taken two every four hours since she’d woken with the alarm and a bitch of a hangover. She swallowed these two a little early with a swig from her water bottle.

Emma rarely drank alcohol – well, maybe a glass of champagne on her birthday – and she never drank alone. She didn’t like the taste at all. Over the years, many dates had insisted she try a glass of the triple-digit bottle they’d bought, trying to impress her. It was all she could do to not grimace with her smile over the rim. And she was certain that if her girlfriends were being honest, they’d list ‘most reliable designated driver’ as their favourite quality of Emma’s.

But last night the pressure of the investigation had left her completely unable to unwind. As the team had further unpacked the full horror of what had happened to Scotty, she’d developed an unrelenting pain in her stomach. She figured it was all of the unshed tears, as she’d been unable to cry for Scotty since Jackson had broken down at the briefing. The power of Jill’s distress had seemed to blast her own deep inside her somewhere, leaving just the ache in her gut, which last night had left her moaning and rocking on the couch.

Knowing she had to do something to relieve the tension, she’d tried Pilates and tai chi, and then back-to-back reruns of
Gossip Girl.
Nothing helped. At eleven-fifteen, standing on a footstool in front of her pantry, she’d searched every corner for a leftover chocolate bar or sweet of any description. Three times she’d pushed aside the almost full bottle of brandy she had bought to make a Christmas cake last year. On the fourth sweep, she held on to it, pulled it down and, standing there, took a deep swig from the bottle.

It was the most hideous thing she’d ever tasted in her life. Swearing, she recapped it and pushed it right to the very back of the cupboard. Ugh!

Five minutes later, she dragged the footstool back to the pantry. For the first time in three days, the knot in her stomach was gone. She drank her first-ever glass of brandy in big gulps, holding her nose and shuddering after every taste.

And now here she was, experiencing the after-effects of finishing half the bottle, partnered with freaken Elvis, something she’d managed to avoid since becoming a detective at Maroubra.

‘I don’t know why Delahunt didn’t come here him self,’ she said, eyeing the recording equipment Elvis had brought for the interview. Why couldn’t I be partnered with Gabriel instead of this lug?

‘He’s with crime scene. I already told you. Andreessen reckons he’s a bit of a buff with forensics. All we got is all this camera equipment. I hope you were listening when Delahunt went through how he wanted this shit set up, because I certainly wasn’t. Fucking Feds – they all think they’re James Bond. Can we get in there now? I want to get this over with, so I can get back to looking into that Berrigan rat-fuck.’

Emma pushed her bag back under the seat, then got out of the car. All the way here, Elvis had been listing every reason he thought Troy Berrigan had killed the Caine woman and Scotty. It made no sense to Emma – mainly because she couldn’t wrap her mind around anyone wanting to do things like this. She’d been involved in a few murder investigations, and the motives then had made sense. Revenge, sex and greed. What had happened here didn’t seem to fit any motive. She’d known Scotty for years, and she could see no connection between him and the Caine woman. And there was no way she could see that anyone could profit from killing a cop and an old lady. It seemed the only motive left here was thrill-killing, and she just couldn’t make her mind understand what sort of a person could get a kick out of this.

The more Emma thought about it, the crazier it seemed to jump to the conclusion that the murders were even related. If you left the two unconnected, it still would leave the Big Three motives as possibilities for both killings. Like revenge: someone may have had a long-held reason to kill Miriam Caine. What was in her past or in her family that could have led to this? And as to Scotty – well, all cops knew they had a target on their back, whether from a specific squirrel they’d locked up, or just some demented psychopath with an itch to slaughter a pig.

But Delahunt reckoned preliminary evidence had connected the scenes, so Emma was looking forward to that briefing tomorrow morning. Confirmation that they were looking for the one killer would eliminate eighty per cent of her suspect hypotheses. But the ones she’d be left with were baffling to her.

Emma shook her head and followed Elvis through the low gate that separated David Caine’s sparse garden from the street.

After setting up the recording equipment according to Delahunt’s specifications, Emma allowed Elvis to conduct the interview. The few questions she initially tried to put in were either cut off or not followed up by Calabrese. Besides, she found that she was gaining more by watching the interaction.

When Emma had been part of Caine’s first interview with Scotty and Jill, she had agreed with Scotty that he did not seem to react as she would have expected the day after his mother was set alight. But she’d seen all kinds of weird reactions by loved ones following deaths. Still, it appeared that Miriam Caine had been murdered, so she and Scotty had dug deeper into Caine’s past to rule him in or out. Only one feature of his life had blipped on the radar – the electrocution of his wife in the bath. She and Scotty had pulled the records. Caine had been looked at hard over that, but the death was ruled accidental, with their child as a witness and nothing to suggest Caine had been involved. Since then, he’d raised his kid and lived with his mother in four different states. Paid taxes every year. He’d had steady work with a national cleaning company that had allowed him to transfer to different working-class suburbs; he’d been in this one for the past two years.

Elvis took Caine through his Incendie statement again, and Emma thought that the man again seemed pretty relaxed about the whole thing. She couldn’t pick up any great anxiety or frustration. Emotionally, he seemed kind of ... blank.

When they reached the end of the statement, Elvis closed his notepad and leaned back against the kitchen chair; he quickly sat forward again when it groaned. Emma took the opportunity to jump in.

‘Mr Caine, can you tell us where you were last Saturday at eleven am?’ she asked.

He turned to face her. ‘The day Detective Hutchinson was killed? I’ve been meaning to say to you that I’m very sorry that happened. He seemed like a good bloke.’

‘Thank you,’ said Emma. She swallowed. ‘He was.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you where I was,’ said Caine, ‘but I’m not sure why you want to know. I was here.’

‘Was anyone here with you? Do you have any way of proving that you were here?’

‘Why the hell would I have to do that?’ said Caine, showing the first sign of elevated emotion she’d seen from him all afternoon. His face flushed, his breathing quickened and he spoke loudly, his hands flat on his kitchen table.

‘Hey, take it easy, Mr Caine,’ said Elvis. ‘We think there might be some connection between the death of your mother and the death of our colleague.’

‘That’s impossible,’ said Caine.

‘What makes you say that, Mr Caine?’ asked Emma.

‘Look, I’m not convinced you people know what you’re doing, to be frank. I can’t see why the death of a cop and the death of my mother would be related in any way. What connection did you find?’

‘There was–’ began Elvis.

‘I’m afraid we don’t have all the evidence together just yet,’ said Emma.

‘Well, what have you got that makes you think there’s some kind of link?’

‘We’re not at liberty to discuss that,’ said Emma quickly. ‘We do, however, still need to know where you were on Saturday. This is a standard procedure when there’s a possible link between crimes.’

‘Well, like I said,’ said Caine, standing. ‘I was right here, with my daughter. You can ask her.’

‘We will. Thank you,’ said Emma.

‘And you can also ask that restaurant manager, Troy Berrigan. He was here too. We were sitting right here at this table, half the day.’

Emma whipped her eyes to Elvis, who sat grey-faced and open-mouthed. Berrigan was here on Saturday?

Their two main suspects had just alibied one another.